1. Related Application Data
Priority is hereby claimed under 35 U.S.C. §119 to Chinese application No. 02117831.3, filed May 22, 2002, the entire content of which is hereby expressly incorporated herein by reference.
2. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for establishing, operating, and maintaining channels at the interfaces between Base Station Controllers (BSC) and base stations in WCDMA, CDMA2000, and TD-SCDMA in International Mobile Telecommunications 2000 (3G).
3. Background of the Invention
With the development of wireless communication technologies, communication networks are growing more and more complex and giant, which demands more on the maintainability of the networks. However, the protocols for 3G (e.g., WCDMA, CDMA2000, and TD-SCDMA systems) only prescribes to establish IP-over-ATM (IPOA) channels between base stations (BTS or NodeB) and the base station controllers (BSC/RNC) and doesn't specify the method to establish maintaining channels for base stations. Thus automatic remote launching of base stations is not an inherent capability, and it results in inconvenient network maintenance. Currently, there are typically 2 methods to establish a maintaining channel for a base station. In method 1, servicing staff configure relevant data at BS side and BSC side to configure a special operating and maintaining channel, thus the problem of the base station initiation and operation is solved. This method is very inconvenient and may result in errors. In method 2, when all base stations start for the first time, they send a request to the operating and maintaining station of the BS through the default Permanent Virtual Connections (PVC) and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses preset at the factory to obtain formal configuration data. At the next startup, the base stations can use the formal PVCs and IP addresses to contact the operating and maintaining station of the BS and delete original channels and IP information. In this method, all base stations can not start simultaneously and the network maintenance and management is very complex during the startup of the base stations due to fixed communication ports or IP addresses used for all base stations.
Seen from above, the major problem of conventional methods for establishing base station maintaining channels is the lack of an automatic mechanism for establishing maintaining channels. Therefore, establishing maintaining channels with the conventional methods requires complex operations and high workload, and may result in errors, causing high maintenance cost but poor maintenance quality.